


Let the Bodies Hit the Floor

by kisahawklin



Category: The Losers (2010)
Genre: Author's Favorite, Gen, POV Outsider, Team
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-03
Updated: 2014-02-03
Packaged: 2018-01-11 01:53:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1167213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kisahawklin/pseuds/kisahawklin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Don't mess with Jensen's family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let the Bodies Hit the Floor

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theLiterator](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theLiterator/gifts).



> For theLiterator, who asked for so many amazing things, but the thing that caught my attention was: "I’d love fic where Jensen is the scary person in Jensen’s life." Hopefully this fits the bill!

_Ssssssschnick. Ssssssssssssssschnik. Ssssssssssschnik._ The sound of Roque sharpening his knife is louder than it should be.

Cougar tilts his head to hear the scratching of Clay's pen on paper, doing paperwork. Or maybe doodling, if he's procrastinating. 

Pooch is turning cards onto the table, the stiff _thhhhhwap_ meaning he's losing at solitaire. Again. 

There is no other sound. He sits up, pushes back his hat, and looks at Clay. Clay looks up almost immediately. He always knows when someone's eyes are on him. "What is it?"

"Too quiet," Cougar says, and Roque and Pooch look up too, both of them listening for the sounds of Jensen that have been missing for minutes. Maybe half an hour. 

"Jensen!" Roque yells, and no surprise to anyone, least of all Cougar, there is no answer.

"When's the last time anyone saw him?" Clay asks.

"He got that phone call," Pooch offers. 

"His sister," Cougar says. He'd seen the number when it came up on the screen, and he could tell Jensen had been speaking in the weird made-up code they talked in when they didn't want anyone else to know what was going on. 

"That was what, half an hour ago?" Roque asks.

Cougar glances at his watch. "Thirty-four minutes." 

Jensen'd gotten the call, started talking in the code that makes them sounds like flight attendants, and walked out of the room. He'd heard Jensen talking in their room for a while, ten minutes at least. Cougar can't help the shiver that goes down his spine. Jensen'd played them all, and a twenty minute lead for him is as good as two days for anybody else.

Cougar scowls, getting up and going to their room. He sweeps his eyes over the space, immediately noting what's missing. One laptop, the laptop bag Jensen hates because people mistake him for an IT guy and ask him stupid questions, and a windbreaker. Fatigues on the floor, dresser open to his jeans drawer, piles of them askew because he pulled the wad of cash out from the back.

"Jensen?" Pooch asks as he comes up to the door. He stops just outside the threshold and Roque and Clay pile up behind him. 

Cougar shakes his head. He's pissed at himself for not noticing something more than typical sibling stupidity was going on; for not noticing Jensen's lapse into silence; for missing him sneak out the back door. Jensen's stealthy, like they all are, but Cougar knows better than to let his attention slip. When Jensen goes off alone, bad things happen.

He sighs out his frustration and pulls out Jensen's third-favorite laptop. Logging into the American Airlines site using Jensen's name and password, he scans Jensen's account tab for recent flights. When he doesn't find anything, he opens up a new tab for Delta.

Clay comes into the room and looks over his shoulder as he goes through the airlines one by one, finally finding the flight Jensen'd booked on imaginary points he'd awarded himself on United. "D.C.," Clay says. "Isn't that where Jenny's working?"

"Alexis," Cougar corrects automatically. She hates being called Jenny and he's always reminding them. "She's on contract for the next six months."

Clay wipes a hand over his stubble, staring down at the computer. "How many points does he have?" Clay asks. 

Cougar just looks up at him. 

"Right. Book us the next flight out." Clay turns around and shoos Pooch and Roque down the hallway. "Let's go get him."

~~~

Cougar spends the entire flight trying to keep himself from building worst-case scenarios. Alexis is as smart as Jensen - maybe smarter - and her work takes her all over the globe. She contracts out to anyone who can afford her and her expertise is apparently so valuable that people often do stupid things to convince her to work for them. 

It never goes well for those people. Alexis is pretty competent at fucking their shit up if she's got a computer to hand (often aided and abetted by Jensen), and she's no slouch at a fistfight, if it comes to it, but she has Emma, and Emma is something the really stupid people will try to exploit. 

That's when she calls Jensen and bad things happen. Cougar knows about two times Jensen's gotten Emma back; once when she was a toddler, and once when she was five. She'd bitten one of her kidnappers hard enough to draw blood.

Since then, Jensen's taught her things no seven-year-old should have to know. In between teaching Emma how to incapacitate a three hundred pound man in a single shot, he'd lectured Alexis about retiring, finding a little place in the country and doing brainless work somewhere Emma could be a normal kid. Alexis always rolled her eyes at that, but Cougar's noticed she seems more willing to listen every time Emma gets taken.

Thinking about Alexis and Emma in some boring town, doing boring things like t-ball or ballet classes calms him a little, and Cougar stares out the window and wonders what they're going to find when they land.

~~~

Cougar can smell something wrong a mile away, though it's all instinct and no proof. Something's not right at Alexis's workplace but they don't have any other leads on Jensen, and he won't be found if he doesn't want to be - not unless they can get Alexis to help them. Clay and Roque wait outside the plain office building, and he and Pooch do their best to look non-threatening and gain their visitors' passes. 

Alexis looks shocked when she sees them come out of the elevator, and then scared. They're watching her, then. He catches her eye and she nods slightly, shifting some things around in her stacks of paperwork before sitting down and typing furiously at her computer.. 

When they get closer, Cougar can see a piece of paper stuck to her heel, and she flicks her eyes down to it as they approach.

"Hey, Carlos, Linwood, good to see you. You should've called." She continues to type like the devil's on her ass, and Cougar reads _PHONE_ in block print on the paper on the floor. "I'm too busy to do dinner tonight, but maybe later, if you'll still be in town?"

He sees Pooch pocket the phone sitting on the corner of her desk, and smiles. "Of course," Cougar says, leaning in to kiss her temple. "Just wanted to surprise you. I'll call you tomorrow."

"Tonight," Alexis says, smiling weakly. "I don't want to wait until tomorrow."

"Sure," Cougar says, giving her arm a reassuring squeeze. "Text us when you're free." 

She smiles sadly at him. A half-second later he can see her resolve settle into place as her face hardens. "Emma will be so happy to see you," she says, her voice icy.

~~~

"What is it with the Jensens?" Pooch asks as they walk back to the van. "Do they have a neon sign above their heads that says 'fuck with me, I'm having a bad day and want to mess you up'?"

Cougar shrugs. He wouldn't want to mess with Alexis on his best day, but he almost feels sorry for someone that thinks they can use Emma to get to her. 

Pooch pulls out the phone and hands it to Cougar. It's Jensen's, of course, and as soon as his finger hits the touch screen, a map comes up, a red dot in the middle of it, pinging away. It's on the George Washington Parkway, heading out to the western suburbs. Pooch throws himself into the driver's seat and Roque shifts out of shotgun to let Cougar navigate. 

He and Pooch have always made a good team, so it only takes minimal directions to get him on the parkway. The drive takes them past the CIA headquarters, over the river and through the woods, and they end up in a seedy looking warehouse somewhere in Northern Virginia. Jensen's dot had stopped moving twenty minutes ago. 

~~~

Clay looks like he might suggest Cougar take a position up high, but Cougar lifts an eyebrow and puts an end to that idea. Clay shrugs. He knows this is personal, and it's not like there's any great views into a cement building with dingy windows.

They split up and take both entrances, finding nothing but bodies bleeding out on the floor. One after the next, clean shots to the head or chest, stupid looks frozen on their faces. Cougar's mouth sets in a grim line. They're killers, every one of them, but none of them get tunnel vision the way Jensen does when his family's in trouble.

Cougar's going to spend the next month watching over Jensen when he's sleeping, soothing away nightmares.

There are more bodies in the interior, and Roque and Pooch come around the corner, guns down like they know exactly what they're going to find in here. Cougar checks the bodies anyway, never leave someone for dead when you can just leave them dead.

The silence that started with Jensen's departure is growing heavy over them all, and they follow the trail of bodies to the back corner of the warehouse, where a tiny office with blacked out windows is the only hundred square feet of space they haven't set eyes on. 

They all raise their guns and Cougar pushes the door open.

Jensen is standing in the middle of the office, bruised and bloody, with Emma in his arms, squeezing his neck so tightly his face is turning red. Cougar lowers his gun and walks up to them slowly, putting one hand firmly on Jensen's waist, settling him visibly, and the other one brushing Emma's hair out of her eyes.

"It's okay," Cougar says, and Emma nods solemnly at him, her big blue eyes clear. There's no fear there, she knows Uncle Jake's got her, and he nods in understanding. He knows that kind of absolute faith.

He takes out the phone and punches out a text to Alexis. 

_Looks like we're on for dinner._

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Let The Bodies Hit The Floor, by kisahawklin (podfic)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8863831) by [cookiemom6067](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cookiemom6067/pseuds/cookiemom6067)




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